Costa Concordia to be Salvaged today

[Crossroads Inc.]

In a massive Engineering projectsaid to be costing over 600 Billion Euros's, the Costa Concordia is set to be raised and re-floated:

A daring attempt to pull the shipwrecked Costa Concordia upright will go ahead on Monday, Italian officials have confirmed.

The Civil Protection agency said the sea and weather conditions were right for the salvage attempt.

Engineers have never tried to move such a huge ship so close to land.

Thirty-two people died when the cruise ship hit rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio in January 2012. It has been lying on its side ever since.

Five people have already been convicted of manslaughter over the disaster, and the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, is currently on trial accused of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

Continue reading the main story

See how the Costa Concordia will be pulled upright

Huge challenge
The salvage operation is due to begin at 06:00 (04:00 GMT) on Monday, and it is being described as one of the largest and most daunting ever attempted.

The head of the operation, Nick Sloane, told AFP news agency that it was now or never for the Costa Concordia, because the hull was gradually weakening and might not survive another winter.

Engineers will try to roll the ship up using cables and the weight of water contained in huge metal boxes welded to the ship's sides - a process called parbuckling.

This procedure must be done very slowly to prevent further damage to the hull, which has spent more than 18 months partially submerged in 50ft of water and fully exposed to the elements.


Special prayers were said for the salvage operation
More boxes will then be attached to the other side, and the water will be replaced with air to add buoyancy, allowing the vessel to be towed away and broken up for scrap.

If the operation goes wrong, environmentalists warn that toxic substances could leak out into the sea.

For the people of Giglio, the salvage operation will be an important moment - and a special prayer was said during Sunday Mass.

The small island's economy depends hugely on tourism and the presence of the wreck has discouraged visitors.


How the Costa Concordia capsized
The salvage project has so far cost more than 600m euros ($800m; £500m) and could cost a lot more by the time the operation is complete.

[Mr Bean]

Six hundred billion or six hundred million?
Also why not just cut her up for salvage?

[Crossroads Inc.]

My bad is supposed to be million.
And I believe that the they cannot cut it up for scrap in that area

[Broomstick]

Also why not just cut her up for salvage?

Cutting her up in place, half-submerged, risks spilling crap into the sea that will be very bad for the local sea life. They still have booms in place to guard against things like fuel and oil leaks, but remember how huge the ship is. Just the on-board content of, say, hydraulic fluid or, I don't know, window-washing cleaner, represents a LOT of a given chemical. If they can get her upright and tow her off to a breaking yard where they can dismantle the ship in a controlled manner there will, in the end, be less dead fish and less clean up to do. As it is, there's quite a bit of crap already lying on the sea floor. I believe there's a plan to retrieve things like luggage and try to get personal items back to the owners though, of course, some of those items are probably ruined by 20 months in salt water.

She will but cut up for salvage, just not in that location.

So far, the operation is going according to plan. They're raising the Costa Concordia very slowly and carefully monitoring what's going on, but the video images clearly show a change in where the waterline meets the ship.

[Thanas]

Livestream here.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Thanks for the video link Thanas, Just watched an update of it and pretty impressed with how much is out of the water. You can see that part that has been submerged for months and WOW is that trashed!

[Broomstick]

Yes, thanks for the link. I hadn't checked in since this morning and they've made considerable progress. Looks like so far so good, I hope the rest of the operation continues without a hitch.

[Enigma]

The salvager in me is wants to take part in the scrapping.

[Irbis]

The small island's economy depends hugely on tourism and the presence of the wreck has discouraged visitors.

Discouraged? Weird, I'd think it would be tourist attraction? Granted, maybe not the kind who would stay extended period, but still.

Pity she can't be repaired.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The cost to repair would be far FAR more than building a new ship from scratch.
That, and you'll never be able to get customers again, no one is going to want to sail on a cruise ship that has crashed and been full of dead bodies.

On another note... Does anyone know if there has been any similar sized engineering projects? I mean in terms of scale, has anything like this been done before?

[Thanas]

Who is leading the salvage? My bet would be Dutch or British given they have the most experience with this, but I can't find the info.

[Broomstick]

Titan Salvage, multinational salvage company with branches in the US, UK, Singapore, and Australia. Apparently originally an American company working in the Caribbean as a sub-contractor to a Dutch salvage operation.

Here is their site on the Concordia salvage operation.

[Thanas]

Thanks.

[PeZook]

On another note... Does anyone know if there has been any similar sized engineering projects? I mean in terms of scale, has anything like this been done before?

I think Pearl Harbor salvage operations were similar in scale, even if the individual ships weren't quite as huge.

[CaptHawkeye]

Quite as huge is an understatement. The biggest ship salvaged at Pearl was Oklahoma, and she was around 28,000-30,000 tons while Costa Concordia is a whopping 114,000 tons. Super carriers are often lighter than this. Not to mention Oklahoma was salvaged in the sheltered anchorage of Pearl Harbor. Costa Concordia's wreck was facing into open ocean though as far as I know the Mediterranean is fairly calm. I also can't imagine either ship weighed as much as the paper values when they were salvaged. It makes salvage work much easier to lighten the ships as much as possible before righting and refloating after all.

[PeZook]

It involved refloating several battleships and recovering weapons and ammunition from others, though. I can't imagine how dangerous work it must be to handle heavy gun ammunition underwater

But yeah, quite a different operation than that one. But then again, every salvage operation is unique and size of the ship does not always determine difficulty.

[Sea Skimmer]

114,000 is the ships gross tonnage, her volume. The media is entirely incapable of figuring this out. Listed full load displacement tonnage is 51,387 tonnes, only about 5,000 more then Titanic, and of that several thousand tons of fuel was removed.

This is still kinda nothing in my mind compared to the Italians raising battleship Leonardo da Vinci, after she blew up, then righting her by buoyancy adjustments while afloat completely upside down. She flipped with some serious violence and that was the first time anyone had even come close to trying such a ridiculous salvage operation.

USS Oklahoma might have been smaller then Concordia, but her salvage was done with the wreck half buried in mud and required inventing a lot large amount of technology and techniques that subsequently became world standard for such operations. She also still had most of her ammunition inside her, which was a reason plus the mud why they went so slow. Size isn't everything.

[CaptHawkeye]

The salvage plan shows that Costa Concordia is basically just being pulled and dropped onto an underwater platform. Seems much easier than flipping the entire vessel and all it's top weight 180 degrees. Righting always seems to be the hard part of salvaging, re floating not so much if their are decks still above the waterline. USS California suffered about the same amount of damage at the same rate as Oklahoma did at Pearl Harbor, but sank flat and was back in action sooner. However being a more modern ship she may have been given a higher priority.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The first part is done, ship has been turned upright at last.
Looking at the pics of the ship, it is really amazing how much damage was done to it as it tipped over.
The whole one side is TRASHED,
Guess a year and half underwater will leave a bit of a Mark.

[RogueIce]

ABC News Image

Not sure if that's the most current view or not, but here you go.

[Kitsune]

If you read on such ships, the designs of such ships are getting pretty top heavy
Smooths rolls actually because makes for a longer roll but increases tipping risks

http://video.pbs.org/video/2223857670/

[Lord of the Abyss]

Time lapse video from the BBC.

[CJvR]

The Italians have done some remarkable salvage operations before, such as flipping the Leonardo da Vinci.
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/wonde ... ing-feat-1

[Thanas]

While certainly true, this was a dutch/american salvage operation, with the head of it being from South Africa...

[Kitsune]

Looks like the eventual plan is to break her up. . . Did not think it likely they refit her but was not sure